View source for Alana Bar'Dyness

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| name                = Alana Bar'Dyness
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| died                = 
| affiliation         = [[Taurian Concordat]]
| profession          = [[Colonel]]
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}}

==History==
'''Alana Bar'Dyness''' (b.????, d.????) was an officer in the Taurian Defense Force, and during [[Operation BULL RUN]] - the [[Star League]] invasion of the Taurian Concordat that launched the [[Reunification War]] - was appointed the commanding officer of the planetary defenses of [[New Vandenberg]], the most important planet in the Concordat outside of the [[Hyades Cluster]].<ref name="H:RWp89">''Historical: Reunification War'', p. 89-91, "Charon's Express"</ref>

Bar'Dyness - a [[Colonel]] at the time - had numerous bunkers and underground facilities constructed on New Vandenberg. The bunkers were capable of housing not just the military garison, but also millions of civilians, and some of the facilities constructed or moved underground included manufacturing facilities, hospitals and schools. Thanks to Bar'Dyness' preparations, when the [[Star League Defense Force]] finally launched its planetary assault on New Vandenberg in January [[2588]], it was unable to locate the garrison, despite spending forty days bombarding cities, industrial sites and other regions of the world from orbit, dropping more than 200,000 tons of predominantly incendiary ordnance from [[aerospace fighter]]s and even attempting to defoliate the entire of the continent of Brittain.<ref name="H:RWp89"/>

When three [[corps]] of SLDF ground troops dropped onto New Vandenberg in February, Bar'Dyness' forces immediately engaged them, inflicting more casualties than expected and frustrating [[Field Marshal]] [[Amos Forlough]] intensely. Forlough reacted in a brutal fashion, ordering the use of weapons of mass destruction to be used on the civilian population, including nuclear strikes on selected targets. Several days later, the TDF launched their own WMD attacks in response.<ref name="H:RWp89"/>

In the face of mounting casualties, the SLDF continued to grind down the defending forces, fighting the final major battle of the campaign on the 23rd of August, when the [[1st Striker Regiment|First]] and [[3rd Striker Regiment|Third Striker Regiments]] surrounded and captured the last few surviving [[companies]] that constituted all that was left of the [[122nd Concordat Chasseurs]] near New Vandenberg's south pole.<ref name="H:RWp89"/> For the SLDF, the conquest of New Vandenberg was the single costliest operation of the war to date; more than five thousand troops had died in direct combat against the TDF, with many more dying as a result of attacks using weapons of mass destruction, and more than five times as many had suffered wounds so severe and debilitating as to prevent them ever returning to combat duty, and many died from wounds during the following months. [[I Corps (Star League)|I]], [[II Corps (Star League)|II]], [[IV Corps (Star League)|IV]] and [[XI Corps (Star League)|XI Corps]] could only muster approximately forty percent of their preconquest combat strength, while the [[Federated Suns Auxiliary Corps]] was at approximately sixty percent strength, having joined the battle later.<ref name="H:RWp91">''Historical: Reunification War'', p. 91, "The Reaper Is Relieved"</ref>

As severe as the SLDF casualties were, the consequences of the invasion were far worse for the population of New Vandenberg. Every major city was in ruins, as was every industrial center that hadn't moved underground. Somewhere between fifty and a hundred million civilians were dead, while hundreds of millions more were homeless, and the population had been rendered absolutely incapable of supporting themselves due to the devastation wrought by Forlough's forces. The [[Bureau of Star League Affairs]] had to take over administration of the planet as the population lacked the resources to operate their own government, and the thousands of relief workers and tens of thousands of tons of supplies the Bureau had arriving within weeks paled into insignificance in the face of the desperate needs of the population. Forlough's actions on New Vandenberg left the population of the planet undergoing decades of rebuilding, work that continued well into the [[twenty-seventh century]].<ref name="H:RWp91"/>

It is unconfirmed whether Bar'Dyness survived the battle for New Vandenberg.

==References==
<references/>

==Bibliography==
* ''[[Historical: Reunification War]]''


[[Category: Taurian Concordat Characters|Bar'Dyness, Alana]]